The present invention relates to a communication network having configuration elements or object instances such as switches and multipliers, and more particularly to a network management operation system capable of efficiently processing the management operation for object instances of a communication network.
A network management operation system has a management information base (MIB) reflecting a predefined containment relationship between network object instances, to efficiently manage the communication network. A technique of filtering information sent from managed object instances and displaying the filtered information on a display device, by using the management information base, is described, for example, in IEEE Network Magazine, March 1991, pp. 10 to 15.
This document proposes to use the management information of a containment relationship only in filtering and displaying reports from managed object instances. In the practical network management, information communicated between a manager and managed object instances includes not only reports sent from the managed object instances to the network management operation system, but also control commands sent from the system to the object instances to be managed. An efficient management operation method taking such bi-directional communications into consideration has been expected.